An RTS would have been a better option.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the DUST 514 announcement. I know that is too early for me to judge their direction and the impact it will have in EVE, but nevertheless I feel that there is something wrong.

I don't directly participate in the 0.0 sov game, but any changes to it will directly affect me since I'm a Providence resident (region controlled by CVA). I also understand that a change or probably a complete overhaul of the sov mechanics was due. I've read multiple blogs and forum posts criticizing the current way sovs are defended.

I understand CCP decision for a console game. Consoles are very popular and will likely increase their income. But an FPS? Really?!? I haven't done a study neither I'm quoting one, but FPS is probably the most crowded category of console games. It seems that every month a new FPS hits the market. Never mind the long list of existent and very popular FPS franchise like Halo series, CoD series, Quake/Doom series, BF series and R6 series just to name a few.

Even if they achieve huge numbers at launch I can't see them being able to keep them with this type of competition. I'm not saying CCP can't compete at this level. They will probably put a very decent product, but we are talking playing in the major leagues on their first time at bat. It will be rough.

What about an RTS? I think this would have been a better option. Not only there is more room in the RTS market, but I believe that this type of gameplay would be a better fit for the EVE world. There are so many possibilities that an RTS/MMO combination could give to players. Imagine using your Rhea or you Ark to bring provisions or more weapons or a battalion from one planet to another to reinforce your RTS forces? Also the scale would be significantly bigger. Even if you have 256 players in a single battle (feat which only MAG supposedly does) that number seems ridiculously small to determine the fate of a planet. With an RTS you can have 50 players in one planet going at each other with armies representing thousands of troops. This epic fight between armies makes more sense than 100 or so players shooting at each other.

I also question the capability of the current holder alliances to gather dominant FPS forces to control the planets they currently posses. Even though many of these alliances bolster a big roster, I don't think that they can field an army for protection. They will rely exclusively on contracts made with the FPS players for this. We know how ruthless players are in EVE. Can you imagine how much more the FPS crowd will be once they understand how much power they have? They will likely have no ties to the alliance in EVE except for their pay. Basically, if someone pays them more they are likely to flip. All those sacrifices and hard work to obtain and keep your sov can go out of the window regardless of what you do.

If you look around there is only one alliance that has the numbers to take advantage of this addition... Goons. The Something Awful community is one of the largest internet communities. There are hundreds of members just looking for the next FPS in the market. The Goons should have no problem getting members from their ranks to play the FPS side. This can give them an overwhelming advantage. Hmm... the Delve holder getting improper assistance from CCP. What does that reminds me of?

Anyway, only time will tell. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm not. In any case, if you were eagerly waiting on the addition of planets to the game since this clip, you got PUNKED!

Training update.

As with any MMO, progress is one of the more important aspects of the game. If your avatar progress stalls, your gaming experience takes a big hit. With all its complexity and depth, EVE has been a very understanding game. It doesn't penalize me for only playing 2-3 hours a night. Not having to shoot 100 times my guns or mine 50 asteroids to level a skill is a great feeling. Nothing makes me happier than waking up my laptop and have the EVE Skill Monitor greet me with a "Skill training complete" message. So where am I?

In the last month Dante has made a lot of progress in multiple areas. He is now able to fit Tech 2 armor hardeners, has almost all light/medium drone relates skills to IV (Gallente spec is next) and has improved a bunch of core skills involving shields, MWD and ABs. The biggest decision made was a decision involving his dps potential. I'm very clear as to which ship I want him flying by the end of the year (GO GO Ishtar!!), but I wasn't sure what I wanted to fit for dps. One thing was certain, it had to be Tech2. Anything less, to me, would be an epic fail.

I pulled up EVEMon and look at the time it would take for him to get Tech 2 blasters... approximately 21 days. Not bad, I thought. I can be going around on my Isthar with some nice Tech 2 blaster for on-your-face pew-pew. Unfortunately there was something wrong. As I was thinking on that fitting, nightmares of my experience with blasters on the Thorax and Brutix came to me. Blasters? Am I really going to put blasters on this ship. I hate blasters!! True, they are awesome at close range and with the right ship/fits/skills probably unstoppable, but Dante doesn't have those skills.

I looked again at the Ishtar info and then at his skills. Back and forward... Wait! What was I thinking? Am I blind? 10% bonus to drone hp and dmg, +5km bonus to range, +50m3 bay. Then I look at his stats... Interfacing IV, Combat Op IV, Sharpshooting IV, Gallente Spec III, Durability IV, Navigation IV, Scout Op V. The answer is DRONES stupid!!!

And so it was. Since he already had access to light and medium Tech 2 drones I just added the Heavy Drone skill all the way to V in the planner. After 28 days he gets Ogre II. Dante is currently 3 days away from Heavy IV. After that I'm queueing some other skills to improve other aspects of his game to then continue to Ogre II.

Armand's training schedule was much easier to plan. I knew for a long time what I wanted from him. In these past couple of weeks he learned to fly an Iteron V (that is a lot of cargo for a Tech 1) and a Viator. The Viator has been specially handy since it allows me to carry anything Dante needs and brings back all the loot from the ratting/plexing. Besides a lot of hauler skills he improved Mining Barge to IV and added mining drones. Right now he has a couple of days of drones skills to improve those mining drones benefits and then is straight to a Hulk. That wont happen until October thanks to Astrogeology V (12 days) and Mining Barge V (20 days), but I look forward to him destroying belts with the gang. After that is some logistic training so he can support Dante in w-space before heading to production.

Harder than it looks.

Wow! Its been almost a month since my last update. Is crazy how time just seems to pass you buy when you are busy.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Life has kicked me hard this past month. I have only a few hours at the end of the day for me and I have to decide between writing about the game I play or playing the game. I choose for the later always. :)

Besides finding the time, it is also challenging to find topics to discuss. I refuse to just post crap for the sake of an update. Playing for few hours every day with a limit set of skills makes it hard to be as prolific as others bloggers. I do think that there are still subjects that I can tackle (and will tackle) in the future.

About the other bloggers... Even though I've been away from my own blog I keep a good eye on the blogs recommend in this site. Thanks to the NetNewsWire app on my iPhone I keep up with all the good stuff from Manasi, Letrange, Kirith Kodachi, Mendolus and Wilhem among others.

Even though all of there are great, there is a particular blog that has been great to follow for the last month, EVE Newb. I know, I know... Am I really suggesting that Spectre has something worth reading? Well... after loosing CK's EVE Blog Banter #9, our loved pirate was a bit upset and decided to *show them* by making a name for himself. The series, which is already on its 4th installment, took a disastrous turn when Hallan Turrek threw down the gauntlet and challenged Spectre. Definitely a good read.

In a more serious note, Manasi recently posted a very interesting and useful guide on tactical bookmarks. I had a couple of BMs in my systems, but nothing as detail and complete as this. Is going to take me a while to set all those BMs in the systems I usually roam and live in, but with all the red traffic in the Providence and surrounding areas it is must-have.

Keeping the corp afloat.

Our corporation is currently experiencing some economic difficulties . As I understand it this is caused by a combination of things rather than a single event. But the important thing is that something needs to be done before we can't even fuel our POS.

The response from the corp has been very positive. In the last couple of days I've seen more people ratting in Providence and last night our mining wing went all out in our Monday's mining op. With the help of an Orca (thanks Meatay) and an Iteron V (thanks Gert) our Hulks and Retrievers mined non-stop.

The best part of it all?? Beside reaching our goal of ore for the night we were able to pull a bit more for personal profit.

I think Meatay is doing a great job leading the mining wing. Hopefully we can get a momentum going and maybe add a second day a week of these ops.

Now some pics:

Printed media.

Its been a while since I bought or subscribed to a magazine. With all the information we have at our fingertips via blogs, wiki, forums, fan pages, etc it seem to me that spending money on a magazine is a waste of hard earn cash. The magazine may be printed and delivered in no time, but the articles in it had to be written, reviewed, edited and whatever else that was needed weeks before the magazine was shipped. It means that even the day the magazine arrives it has information that is probably weeks old.

Because of this and many other factors, I have to say that I was surprised when I first learned about E:ON magazine. A printed magazine of an ever changing MMO. Not only ever changing, but one that had already great coverage in the web via multitude of sites. I basically said "bah!" and ignore it... until a post in Manasi blog.

The list of content included almost every blogger I followed. Hmm... Could this be worth reading? We'll find out soon. I decided to give it a try. Hopefully is as good as it sounds. We'll see.

Exploration re-visited.

Two weeks ago I hit a wall with the PVP in Providence (more about that in another post). I decided to park the Thorax and Brutix and went back to ratting and missions.

I did a few missions in the low-sec areas of Domain when I came to Providence, but going back to Mamet or Misaba was out of the question. I decided to try something in the Domain empire space. After looking at the list of agents in the area I decided to help the Carthum Conglomerate. There were three reasons for this. They were in Domain, had a big amount of L4 agents and multiple research agents. Unfortunately the L1 missions are BORING! After doing this for 2 days I JCed back to Providence for a change of pace.

Ratting in Providence is great. The bounty is good (around 950k per Sansha battleship), the salvage is better than anything I've seen before and if you get lucky a True Sansha can appear and drop some crazy good loot. This also goes great with my ad-hoc schedule. I can join at any time and get going immediately. It is really a great place for ratting, but that is also the big problem. A lot of people come to this area to do the same.

About a week ago I couldn't find a system that wasn't packed. I still was not ready for more PVP, but I didn't have many options... or so I thought. After debating between continue my search for a ratting spot or going back to those L1 suddenly it came to me. Exploration!!!

I immediately jumped in my Imnicus and started to explore. I forgot how much I liked exploration. It is like nothing else in EVE. Its own mini-game. After deploying the probes and running some scan I hit a Sansha Provincial Hub. I thought I could hit it alone, but it wasn't the case. After an SOS in Corp chat Gat and Zee came to the rescue.

If I recall we had 4 or maybe 5 waves. The fights were fun and the loot amazing. We had a True Sansha battleship that dropped great loot. This was besides all the great bounty, salvage and regular loot. The plex was a success and I was hooked again.

Every night after that I've done some exploring. Some times I get lucky sometimes I don't. I've found a big number of different plexes in the area. I tried to find information about them, but so far nothing really good. I'll start writing down the name of the plex and put together a description of it. Maybe I can add that to Evelopedia or EVE-wiki to help future explorers. It will be a while before I can hit all the different types, but I look forward to them. Specially the really tough ones like the Sansha Provincial HQ and something called the Sansha Minefield.

Additions to the fleet.

Those following this blog know that I got me a Myrmidon last month. This has become my 0.0 ratting boat and so far has been a great success. Unfortunately I didn't feel it was the right boat for a PVP roam. I'm not saying that it can't be and I know some corpmates use it successfully. Its just not what I was looking for. After saving some ISK I got me a Brutix. I fit it really close to what I had in my Thorax. Based on the bonus for the ship I went with a 2x MAR II in the lows to help me stay alive long enough since I can't fit Tech 2 guns at this time.

It still hasn't seen any action, but I hope that changes soon. For now here are some pics of these 2 beauties.

I really like Gallente engineering.

The more the merrier.

We are multiplying! Corpmate Ajax joined the blog-sphere today with his first post. This makes the third AU-F member with a blog.

Hopefully he can keep up with Mend because I can't. :)

Someone Loses an Eye

Welcome!

Greed.

There are so many aspects of EVE that mimic real life, but I think nothing reflects true life better than Industry roles. As in real life it is all about GREED.

Yes, you can do a lot of other things to increase your ISK consumption like ratting or exploring or missions or roaming for unexpected pilots (if you are a pirate). The difference is that those will provide you with entertainment while you increase your wallet. That is not the case with Industry.

Putting invention jobs on the station to see if 1 of the 20 invention jobs will produce something or pointing your mining strips to an asteroid are far from being fun or entertaining. There is only one reason we do it.... ISK!

I found the Industry role interesting from reading other bloggers entries. I always done some sort of crafting in previous MMOs, but it usually was just a side thing with little to no importance. That is not the case here. In EVE crafting is a very important part of the game. The ships, the fits, the booster are almost all player created. Yes, you get some stuff from LPs and the occasional loot, but the majority of people buy their stuff from markets or thru contracts.

The original idea was to do some light mining at the beginning while I figured out the direction I wanted to take with the production, but then the ISK started to come in. I thought "If I can do this much with this crappy setup, then how much more I can do with a better setup?!" That lead to a retriever which lead to mining upgrades which lead to refinery V. Then Refinery efficiency and veldspar processing. I kept looking at one thing... the ISK filling up my wallet.

I still want to do inventions and produce Tech 1 and Tech 2 gear for me and to put in the market to have income when not online, but that has been pushed back again and again.

In 4-5 days Armand will start the slow process of learning Gallante Industrial V. An Iteron V with rigs and expanded cargohold II can carry an insane amount of cargo for a Tech 1 ship. This will also open the door for a Viator. This will allow me to participate in the hauler division of our corp. The question is what to do after that.

The original plan was to stop the mining related skills and concentrate on production. The problem is that with a Hulk so close at hand and the invention and production of tech 2 items like shield extenders/hardeners, armor hardeners and med size drones still so far that decision seems wrong.

Hulk... I can already see my wallet icon blinking.... :)

The Mysterious Enigma.

A while back while I was in Mista someone linked an Enigma in local chat. I was blown away by the ship. It was like nothing I've seen before. I tried the usual places for information, but the only place I read something about it was the eve-wikia that the previous link takes you to.

I don't know how the player got that to link in channel. I couldn't link it myself back to corp or alliance channel. I don't know where that ship was seen. And more importantly... How do you get one?!?

Is this a GM ship? Or is it a future ship which information was data mined? Any information is appreciated.

For now I'll leave you with some screen shots: